Week 7: McCulloch's Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide

"In June 1997 a small painting by Central Desert artist John Warangkula Tjupurrula painted in 1973 attracted worldwide attention by breaking all auction records for an Aboriginal work when it sold at Sotheby's Aboriginal art auction in Melbourne for $206 000. Three years later, the same painting resold for $486 500. Ten years later, Aboriginal art entered yet another era with two paintings beating the $1 million mark. In May 2007 Emily Kame Kngwarreye's Earth's Creation sold at a Lawson Menzies Aboriginal art auction for $1.04 million and two months later, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's 1977 painting Warlugulong doubled this by selling for $2.4 million. 

Around 6000 to 7000 Aboriginal people, about one quarter of Australia's total indigenous population, are engaged, throughout Australia, in the making of art and artefacts with sales of their work in 1996 estimated at more than three times that of other Australian artists.

These figures, combined with the increasing number of galleries showing and selling indigenous art, the vast increase in numbers of Aboriginal community arts centres (from around 30 in 1996 to close to 100 in 2008) and the rise in the secondary market show that growth in this area is not only on the steady increase but rising dramatically. A proportion of these sales is tourist art and craft but an increasingly high percentage is fine art.

Aboriginal art has also been one of the most positive black-white cultural collaborations in modern history - one which benefits not only Aboriginal communities where it has become an important facet of cultural and financial restoration but also Australian society as a whole, and, at a broader level, the art-loving public of the world. It is the art form with which Australia has become most identified internationally." 

"S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide, McCulloch & McCulloch Australian Art Books, Fitzroy, Australia, 2008, p. 8"

I thought this excerpt from McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide was interesting because of two points it makes. Firstly, that approximately one quarter of the Indigenous population of Australia is involved in making art and artefacts and secondly, that the sales of Indigenous art in 1996 tripled the sale of non-indigenous Australian art. These figures are quite staggeringly large as we are not inundated in everyday life and our visual culture by Indigenous art, and yet it seems it is our biggest market here in Australia! I think it is fascinating that in my own personal experience, the majority of art I see is not recognisable as being "Indigenous", and yet it accounts for the majority of sales.

The other point the excerpt makes is how high the prices for Indigenous art can reach. I think it is actually saddening in a way because obviously these large sale sums that the artwork goes for are not the amounts the artists receive. When an artist, such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, passes away it does immediately hike prices for their art, regardless of indigenous or non-indigenous heritage, but with such ridiculous divides between health, death, incarceration and literacy rates between Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous populations despite this apparent wealth, I think a question is raised as to how fair prices are for Indigenous art and how much exploitation takes place in the market.